An announcement was made on Troll Lord Games' forums today.

He passed away of a heart attack at age 69.

A salute to the man who founded our hobby.

/raise glass
/salute

Next orc I kill is dedicated to him then

/mourn

NOOOOOOO! DEAR GOD NOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

I feel so negative about this. Gygax was the most original and creative voice in RPGs in my mind. I absolutely loved his Slayer's Guide To The Undead. And yet all the crappy people who got into the RPG industry did their best to exclude him and crap all over him his whole life. Then all the White Wolf snots decided to shit all over him by claiming that 1st ed D&D was somehow flawed and instead we needed to talk about how it was okay to have a crappy rule system for White Wolf because if we cared about rules we were stoopid twinks. I feel like from this point forward we have only the crappy uninspired dysfunctional bean counters. And no more heart.

*Sound of a Bosun's Pipe Call "Piping the Side"*

"Gary Gygax Departing"

"Hand Salute!"

"Fair Winds and Following Seas, Ship Mate."

Your games and the industry you helped created, kept myself and many others sailors in the Indian Ocean deployments, entertained and occupied during the long hours out there.

You will be missed but not forgotten.

*Raises a glass of Bushmill's Single Malt*

WMS

...wow...

...bit at a loss for words. right now...

Hmmmm ...

Quick, send the mages so we can cyberzombify him! Or at the very least, save his brain!

While sad to see one of the greats go at least for the time we still have Dave Arneson who helped create the first D&D.

I never meet Gary but have been lucky to be able to talk to Dave on occasion when he is down at my local hobbie shop I even played in one of his D&D games a few years back.

Sorry to see ya go Mr. Gygax heres to you.

C'mon dude -- a thread about someone's death is not the place to go off on a rant about game styles that you don't like.

wow... I'd always hoped to get a chance to meet the guy... I'll have to get my group to bust out our 1st ed books and give him a sendoff.

I think the quote on his MySpace page says it all:

"i give the gift of endless imagination."

He will be missed.

Chuck

Sorry, I got emotional.

good bye and thanks for all the rpgs.

I did get to chat with the man a few times. He knew his stuff and could tell a story, at least the ones I heard. And it was his work in AD&D that taught me the proper use of e.g., i.e., and cf, when I was young, not to mention being the only one of my childhood heroes who answered the scrawled letter of a fourth-grader.

I'd like to think of this as a day that the world cries and he rejoices.

I once healed in his name at a LARP event.

I thank him for the joy he has given me and the outlet for my creativity.

Ophis

Does anyone know if the family is asking for donations to a particular charity in his name?

and he leaves us with a large gap in our community, and even larger shoes for the next generations of gamers to fill.

Although I never had much direct contact with (A)D&D and Mr. Gygax' work in general, there's little doubt to be had that the world of RPGs, and nerdtertainment in general, would have been a different, poorer one without his partaking.
My thoughts are with Gary Gygax' family, maybe knowing that his work has, directly and indirectly, inspired and entertained entire generations of people that shared his enthusiasm for the power of imagnination can be of some comfort at this time of loss...

So many of us started with that old box set, RIP Dude.

...I still have mine.

Unfortunately that is not actually his MySpace page. As far as I can tell he didn't have one.

This fits my expectations although I'm not sure why I have them. Back in the late 90's I was blown away to find him running gygax.com. The idea of being able to directly contact someone of his celebrity on the internet was pretty novel (at least to me).

Gary had a significant impact on popular culture. And an immeasurable one on Nerd culture.

You will be missed.

Thanks Gary.

~Eldritch~

Ironically enough, today is considered 'DM's Day', which is celebrated by roleplay gamers worldwide. Correlation of the two is purely coincidental, but promises to make the celebration even better known.

The world will miss you, Gary Gygax, and we thank you from the bottom of our hearts for pioneering the hobby we all know and love so dearly today.

I just learned that Gary Gygax died over the weekend. It was announce by no less than the BBC in their entertainment section.

He was the one to really kick off the hobby. He was the first GM and all of this flowed from what he started.

Take just a momment to remember him.

NY Times story

*Salutes the founder*

So it goes.

Part of me wants to say something flippant about how he failed the ultimate saving throw but the truth is, it is too sad, and too respectful. All this, Shadowrun, VtM, Traveller all RPG's exist because he was in the right place at the right time with the right vision.

Apparently he was still DMing as recently as January.He understood the change in the gaming world brought on by computer games but thought it detracted from the imagination levels of player. I agree.

So raise a cup of mead and thank him for the gift he gave us.

Okay, who has 10,000 GP worth of diamonds?

If you wish to make a donation in remembrance of Gary Gygax
http://www.enworld.org/showthread.php?t=220913

If you wish to send regards to the Gygax Family, Please Read
http://www.enworld.org/showthread.php?t=220720

Gary Gygax Funeral Arrangements - Open to Public
http://www.enworld.org/showthread.php?t=220855

Help making a video collage for Gary's memorial gathering
http://www.enworld.org/showthread.php?t=220916

Bye
Thanee

“In our world, immortality is not for the living. The legend lives on!�
In Memoriam E. Gary Gygax (* 27th July, 1938 — † 4th March, 2008).

Props to the first man with a grand master plan. *salute*

I saw this news a couple of days ago, and looked around on a few of the boards, like this one.
I was truly saddened and shocked, and found myself at a loss for words to express, what I was feeling. Many modern gamers, I am certain, have no immediate recognition of the name.
I now realize, this is what saddened me, not the passing of this man who simply did the thing he loved doing. Entertaining others, and himself in a colorful and innovative way, rivaling any scriptwriter or novelist. He innovated interactive entertainment, before computers or dvd remotes were even a thought in the public conscience. Despite this, he was not someone that you saw come up constantly in forums, chats, interviews, or blogs as a self promoter.
His later years were spent much in the same manner as the ones preceding, running games, conversing with fans, and showing that he was not, ultimately, the man that helped create D&D, but a gamer, just like us.
So, be happy in the memories of all your games played, characters generated, stories told, adventures survived, dungeons crawled, and dragons slain!
E. Gary Gygax, you will be with us and all the gamers to come, if they know it or not, and we are all richer in life xp for it.

True heroes are as rare as unicorns or dragons. We have lost a great one.

Fair thee well, Mr. Gygax

Just seeing the news myself. What can someone say who started gaming with an early version of Gary's games. Played dozens games spawned by his vision and had his life defined by those games.

Thank You Gary!

True. Heros are rare, but thanks to Gygax, there are more Unicorn and dragons in the world than there were before him.

I found out about Gygax's death on my weekly check in on Wizards.com.
I think of all the Greats we have lost over the last couple years, and I realize that you really cannot separate Gygax from them, he is in his own place along with people like Katherine Hepburn, Fred Rogers, Robert Jordan, James Brown. The man was, to my knowledge, still active in promoting gaming until his passing. With his death, no matter the company, Gaming has lost one of its most active enthusiasts and promoters. The world has become just a little less great. The sky is a little less blue. We mark the passing of another Great One, and we are all diminished for the loss.

We live in a time when Greats are becoming fewer and fewer. We have lost another one, and I cry for the loss, not just to our generation, but to future generations. What more could the man have done had he not passed on so young?

The other way to look at it is you were blessed to live in the age when he was creating this stuff and new the gamne 'when' Not like someone watching a classic film now but someone who remembers when it was in the theatres.

It took me a little while to come up with what I wanted to say. This is how it came out.

Farewell, my friend. We'll miss you.

While not every gamer will recognize his name at the drop of a hat, we all know and recognize how much his work has meant. He literally created a sub-culture and a genre of games. Were it not for his work in co-creating the original D&D, our RPG's may not have ever existed, or not have existed in their current form. His deeds will live on and will be forever remembered as the precursor and foundation to the games we love so dearly. Gary, you'll be missed. Let's hope you find a good gaming group to play with in the hereafter.

Wow, I just read my "The Economist" and it ran its Obituary section on Gary. Gives you an idea of the influence of the man.

Just go to a Borders or Barnes & Noble and look at the shelves they have filled with game stuff. He was the cause of it all. You could even argue stuff like Pokemon came from the market he created so add all those annoying toys. (My little girl is so not getting a Pikachu.)

I"m.....




*rolls a coupla dice*



....very sad to see him go

This thread fills my stomach with a hard pit of sadness and loss.

Well, he was a cause of all of it. And Tolkien was a cause of all of that. Etc, etc, etc. It's possible to still honor Gary for all he did, without taking away from those who came before and after. The guy played a major role in creating one aspect of the hobbies we all like (one of the first aspects, without which later ones might not have evolved in the same way), but it's not like he did all of it alone.

Or how Robert E. Howard practically invented the Sword & Sorcery genre with Conan the Cimmerian some 20+ years before J.R.R. Tolkein printed a word? You're right, we shouldn't forget.

I don't think anyone is trying to take away from the contributions of others by honoring the memory of Gary Gygax, though.

If one REALLY wanted to get down to brass tax and splitting hairs, they would note that Jim Rasch, Gary's cousin, was the actual GM that taught Gary and all the other youngin's in their family to RPG by running free-form adventures in their youth. Nobody seems to know a damn thing about that man, though, yet he OBVIOUSLY plays what I would consider a major role in the history of gaming.

The point is that Gary Gygax was the pioneer that brought RPG gaming as a viable hobby to the world at large. Columbus wasn't the first foreigner to set foot in the Americas either, but he was the one at the right place at the right time. So was Gary Gygax, and the man kept with his passion until his dying breath. He was much-loved, and his unique spark will be sorely missed by millions worldwide.

Critias wasn't shitting on Gary and his memory. He was merely pointing out that others are also worthy of acknowledgment, as Gary was not the only person responsible for those things depicted in the post that Critias quoted. It is possible to give the dude his due without going overboard.

And EGGman (and I use that term endearingly) was human too folks. He could be a complete ass at times and a shyster at times and ohh so very egotistical, which only makes him real...and human...and saying it is not disrespectful merely because he died. No one did more to get this industry off the ground. THAT can't be doubted, but even from the beginning he wasn't alone (anyone remember Dave Arneson anymore?) and acting as if the whole hobby even, much less it's spin offs depended on him is a tad naive. Like Colombus and a guy by the name of Amerigo Vespucci, he was only a part of the story.


Isshia